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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is similar about the language in the poems in North and South?
(a) It is crisp and precise.
(b) It is prosaic.
(c) It is rambling.
(d) It is general.

2. What is Bishop's attitude toward the title character and his family in "Manuelzinho"?
(a) Caring.
(b) Cautious.
(c) Distasteful.
(d) Pitying.

3. What does Bishop compare the winter wind to in "The Colder the Air"?
(a) A hunter.
(b) A huntress.
(c) A tiger.
(d) A tigress.

4. What does the tone of "Letter to N.Y." reveal about the friendship portrayed?
(a) It is intimate.
(b) They are just acquaintances.
(c) They frequently argue.
(d) They have just met.

5. What has Bishop arranged in "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore"?
(a) A limo driver to take them shopping.
(b) Tickets for a show.
(c) A reservation at a nice restaurant.
(d) For the weather to be nice when Moore visits.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the poet surprised to learn?

2. What does the viewer hear in "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress"?

3. What does Bishop's uncommon vocabulary reflect about her settings?

4. What does the man in "Songs for a Colored Singer do?

5. What is the tone of the Four Poems?

Short Essay Questions

1. Does Bishop see the ocean as ever-changing or never changing in the poems in Cold Spring?

2. In "Questions of Travel," does the poet decide it is better to travel, or stay home and use one's imagination?

3. Why does "Arrival at Santos" end with the tour group heading toward the interior of Brazil?

4. How is the tone of "A Cold Spring" in contrast to its subject matter?"

5. How is the writing style in "The Riverman" unlike most of Bishop's poems?

6. In "Electrical Storm," why are the pearls twice described as dead?

7. Why does Bishop use the structure of building each line upon the last in "Visits to St. Elizabeth's"?

8. In what way does the language contrast with the emotional situation in "Songs for a Colored Singer?"

9. What is the relationship between the fisherman and the fishhouse in "At the Fishhouses"?

10. How do the poet's descriptions in "Arrival at Santos" reflect her dual state of mind?

(see the answer keys)

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